Sonic Frontiers Definitive Edition Exists Apparently

1. Intro
2. The Why
3. The How
4. The DLC
5. The When
6. The... Outro?

Intro

What? Why Sonic Frontiers? The game is just over 3 years old now! Why haven't they re-released games like Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Heroes, the Sonic Adventure duology, the Sonic Advance trilogy, or even Sonic Lost World which are unavailable on most modern gaming platforms? Wasn't all of the major expansion content for Frontiers free already? Won't this mean the delisting of the original Frontiers on digital storefronts - most notably Steam, the version that's been modded to hell and back by so many passionate and talented fan developers? Where's the logic here?

Wait... I'm going too fast. Let's slow down and restart.

It's been a while since my last post on this site. Last time, my mood regarding the Sonic franchise was one of immediate optimism, of an impending announcement of a new mainline game to come soon. The Game Awards was, if I remember correctly, a mere day before The Game Awards 2025. As we all know by now, no such announcement was to come... but we did get the Highguard fiasco between then and now, so it's not like nothing happened, right? That wasn't related to Sonic at all, but it sure was one hell of a ride to barely be aware of for me... they really let Concord happen again, huh?

Now, the Sonic franchise seems to be in a bit of a "preemtive hibernation" state. The most exciting thing that's happened has been the weekly release of the Chaotix Casefiles audio drama (promo art pictured, right), which features various voice actors from the Sonic games acting out a fun little narrative in-character. While I loved the Chaotix Casefiles, it was not quite enough to tide us over to the next big thing for Sonic. The periodic DLC and in-game events for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds have been better, but again, it's not quite enough to satiate the fans long-term like a new game release would have been. It is worth noting, however, that CrossWorlds is still quite active to this day, which is a fate that nobody expected for it upon its initial overshadowing by Mario Kart World in early 2025's marketing campaigns. Many online, even outside the Sonic fanbase, prefer CrossWorlds' competitive edge to Mario Kart's chaotic and under-developed offerings.

That aside, no new game releases aside from the controversial Sonic Rumble launch have given the fans a lot of insight on what's to come for the brand. A PlayStation State of Play, a Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase, a Future Games Show, and an Xbox Showcase have all come and gone since TGA '25 with not a peep from SEGA about the blue bastard's next adventures. This has proven to be concerning for many fans online, especially considering the upcoming 35th Anniversary for Sonic. We all take as a given that 23rd June - the exact anniversary of the release of Sonic 1 in 1991, called "Sonic's Birthday" officially - will be the latest day that we can expect big news on the next big game. No later than on this day will we bear witness to the future, to that pivotal title that will make or break Sonic's ongoing reputation in the public eye. What if we could see some news about it sooner, then?

Well... what about now? As first reported by this Gematsu article, Sonic Frontiers: Definitive Edition has been rated in South Korea as of 25th March 2026. Unlike the leaks I have had fun imagining about in the past, this one is highly likely to be 100% real. We know this because Sonic Origins Plus, a supposed expanded version of the 2022 collection of the Genesis classics, was similarly rated in South Korea months before being officially announced in June 2023. 2018's Sonic Mania Plus served as precedent at the time for Origins Plus being real even before this leak hit, and true to that precedent Origins Plus ended up adding new playable characters and new ways to experience familiar content (and some questionably-emulated Game Gear ROMs) when it released as both a paid expansion to Origins and as the game's first physical release. Now, Origins Plus being rated early in South Korea serves as precedent for the legitimacy of Frontiers Definitive Edition (which I will refer to as "Frontiers DE" from now on).

All this is to say... something big is coming, without a shadow of a doubt. And that something is coming soon.

So... let's speculate a bit, once again! Join me as we dive into Sonic Frontiers: Definitive Edition, why it exists, and what SEGA could do to justify its existence.

The Why

So... there are a few things to ask about this package. First and most obviously... why Frontiers, of all games? As I mentioned above in my crazed stupor, other games could certainly use an official port or re-release more than this game. Frontiers was released in late 2022 for the PS4 and PS5, Xbox Series consoles, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Aside from one, all of these platforms are still current-gen in 2026, even if they may be on the way out for one reason or another (even though some consoles still feel like they never reached even a fraction of their full potential... eh, discussion for another time). After its release to mixed-yet-favorable public and fan reception, it received further support through patches and major DLC updates that owners of the game could enjoy for no additional cost. You can go buy this game in stores or online right now and play it on whatever platform you please. It is the most recent full-scale mainline 3D Sonic game, to this day. Superstars was a 2D entry, Sonic X Shadow Generations was a re-release packaged with a short add-on campaign, and CrossWorlds isn't even a platformer. So... why release it again?

I've seen a few different takes on answers to this question from others online, so I'll go over them here. First, and most obviously: the Nintendo Switch is no longer a current-gen console. The Nintendo Switch 2 released back in June 2025 (to... a divisive reception, to say the least), and its hardware capabilities put those of its older brother to shame. It may be a low bar, but it does make for some pretty technically impressive stuff being made for the console, even within its first year. Even with that being said, Sonic Frontiers for the Nintendo Switch may be one of the worst excuses for a big-name release in the current decade. Those who know me know that I love Sonic Frontiers a whole lot, and I consider it to be easily one of my favorite games ever made, but it is not hard to see why even I would think so little of the Switch version. Models are noticeably lower-quality, texture quality rides the razor's edge of the Nintendo GameCube, the framerate is stuck at a disappointing 30 per second at best, and the game seems to have been put through a terribly blurry optimization filter that makes everything look fuzzy and unclear, even in docked mode. Loading times suffer, the game looks like shit, the lower framerate makes playing it clumsy, the works. This port was so bad, in fact, that the constraints the platform's underpowered hardware set would impact the game's state of being even on other platforms. The notorious pop-in issue of platforms and track elements in the sky exists both because of the game's flat environment design and the Switch's limited capabilities - that, and the game's notoriously crunched development that I briefly talked about here.

It is most obvious, then, that Frontiers DE would simply be an upgraded port for the Switch 2 which brings the game up to par with its PS5 and PC releases for Nintendo console owners. Those who own Nintendo consoles as their primary gaming devices often don't own other ways to play big games, after all. It's only fair for them to have the same experience as their peers. It's a common sentiment that of all Sonic games available on Switch, Frontiers is the one game that needs a Switch 2 upgrade the most. All other 3D Sonic games do play at 30 FPS on Switch, it's true, but at least those other games hold that framerate consistently. Frontiers barely holds things together in vanilla areas, and once the Final Horizon DLC released in 2023 the Switches of every Frontiers player were all put on life support as they churned out sub-15 FPS gameplay. If you don't have experience with this game or this version of it, I would recommend watching this video for more of an idea on what I'm talking about. Digital Foundry always does a great job showing off the technical aspect of games in an approachable manner.

There is one big issue with this theory, however, and it's one many have pointed out: the game's title will include the phrase "Definitive Edition," not "Nintendo Switch 2 Edition." The latter naming convention has been adopted by almost every enhanced version of other games tailor-made for Switch 2, even by games Nintendo themselves have put out such as Metroid Prime 4 and Pokémon Legends Z-A. This, of course, includes the SEGA releases Sonic X Shadow Generations and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. Simply put: why call this game a Definitive Edition if it wasn't meant to be more than a mere Switch 2 port? As mentioned before, the Sonic series is no stranger to back-to-back re-releases of new games, but before Mania and Origins, the last time a game was re-released so soon after it came out was Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut in 2003, a port which absolutely butchered the graphics and art direction of the 1998 original. In addition, re-releases Sonic Adventure 2: Battle and Sonic Jam had released before that, and Sonic Mega Collection and Gems Collection, Sonic Colors Ultimate, and Sonic X Shadow Generations have released since. Each of these releases featured significant changes and additions that, for better or (more often) worse, served to set them apart from their original releases in more significant ways than typical remasters tend to do. Perhaps a similar fate is to befall Frontiers, if this is the case.

The next question, then, again comes back to why Frontiers is being chosen for this treatment over other games, but for a different reason. Rather than for accessibility, why bring back to the forefront a game which was received lukewarmly on release and whose perception over time has, if anything, only declined? My favorite theory about this is as follows: Sonic Team want to prepare audiences for the inevitable next step the mainline Sonic series will take after Sonic X Shadow Generations launched to unanimous praise that endures today. To do this, they are taking Frontiers back into Tails's workshop to do some final tune-ups and perform some much-needed fixes to give the hypothetical "Frontiers 2" the absolute best chance of being received well in comparison to its predecessors. This way, Frontiers would ideally be re-elevated to its initial warm perception, and its follow-up would ideally take all the lessons Sonic Team learned from that game and Shadow Gens and blow them both out of the water with a smashing home run.

Ideally.

Yes, this approach has its potential upsides, but anyone even slightly in-tune with current gaming culture will tell you that this could go incredibly wrong if not handled with utmost care. If Frontiers DE were to perform mere graphical, technical, and bug fixes across the board, and the game were to be marketed for a whopping $70, not a soul would be happy with that - especially considering the inevitability of the dreaded Digital Deluxe edition pushing that price tag even higher. The original Frontiers was $60, after all, so for me a price hike is not just feared but expected. Sure, a new coat of paint is desperately needed for the game if it were to release anew in the modern day, but any price higher than its original MSRP would not be justified - maybe even its exact original MSRP wouldn't be, either. Unlike some previous Sonic games, too, Frontiers has not seen a permanent price drop on digital storefronts. Physical retailers often sell it for a steal, though, and it does go on sale digitally quite often and for an incredibly low $18 on Steam as of the time of writing (it's even dipped down to $12 once, apparently). Frontiers DE would have to do a lot more than the bare minimum to justify an increased price.

The How

Despite my misgivings with video game prices nowadays, this consideration does open another door that may prove to be exciting. Frontiers DE will have to do a lot more than the bare minimum, won't it? So... what could they possibly do to the game to make it worth more than it was originally? The big thing that comes to mind for many is brand-new content. Perhaps a mini-campaign starring Shadow could be included, like what was done with Generations (pictured, right). Maybe they could include a playable Metal Sonic to drum up hype for the theatrical release of Sonic 4 on 19 March 2027 - which, need I remind you, is less than a year away now. Far and wide, the cries of Silver fans can be heard to include him in something, anything, please, he's been out of the spotlight since his debut in 2006, PLEASE! While any of these things coming true would be incredible, and while I would be quite excited at the prospect of even one of these dreams coming true, I personally have my doubts about content expansions of this scale. I am not sure why Sonic Team would spend so much effort developing new content for an old game like this - as stated by Takashi Iizuka many times by now, Sonic is interested in creating new experiences first, and not on putting out high-effort remakes of past titles like the Adventure games or Heroes. Besides, they have the next mainline game to be working on right now, and hopefully it's getting to a point where it's about ready to be shown to the public. Many fans, myself included, are of the opinion that it will prove to be one of the most important Sonic games to have ever released in terms of brand perception, because while Frontiers was not received with unanimous acclaim, it did prove that Sonic Team could still put out a quality experience. After that, Shadow Generations and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds proved that Sonic Team was capable of producing high-quality titles with the polish, content, and unique fun that could even rival contemporary releases from Nintendo's flagship Super Mario series. Now, we've reached the tipping point: can Sonic Team put it all together and deliver a mainline Sonic title truly worthy of being called triple-A?

New content is not, however, completely out of the picture. Frontiers had a lot, and I mean a LOT, of cut content left over in the game's files. Some content present and visible in the final game even suggests certain contradictory things about how the game was supposed to turn out originally. This video by Cifesk goes in-depth about all of the unused stuff in the game that we know of right now - and their two follow-up videos about Frontiers' development are also very neat, if you're interested. Lots of this cut content suggest that a very different version of Frontiers was initially considered. Three, or even four, full-sized islands could have been seen, instead of the two full-sized islands and three "pieces" of the original Kronos Island that make up the final's Kronos, Rhea, and Ouranos Islands. A height-map of a fourth, unused island has also been found in footage of a developer interview at some conference or other. An island in space, the Ancients' World-Ship, a snowy island, a tropical island, the possibilities of cut and unused content being re-purposed are quite numerous.

In addition, adjustments to the game's balance and structure could also be implemented. A common complaint about Frontiers is that its main gameplay loop is repetitive and shallow - collect Memory Tokens to advance the story, and defeat Guardians to obtain Portal Gears which unlock Cyberspace Portals that award Chaos Emerald Vault Keys that are used to unlock the Chaos Emeralds on each island. It's... same-y, for lack of a better word. The story doesn't really impact the gameplay very much, if at all, so the moment-to-moment experience on each of the four "full" islands (excluding Rhea) looks about identical between them all. Additional set-pieces, story objectives, or alterations to the islands could be introduced that follow the story progression and immerse the player into the world a bit more. Perhaps some more enemy types could be introduced to spice up combat. The combat systems in place in Frontiers are also lacking compared to similar offerings from other games that specialize in the genre of character action - think Devil May Cry, Astral Chain, God of War, or Bayonetta. Sonic's combat tree is big, sure, but every move does the same thing: press a button, watch a mini-cutscene of Sonic performing an attack, and watch the healthbar deplete a certain amount. Sure, some moves can be cancelled into others at any time, so there is some depth. The additions of stat-debuffing parries for the side characters in the Final Horizon expansion do allow for a bit more creative thinking on Sonic Team's part, though. Perhaps the Loop Kick could activate a short defense-breaking debuff that allows Sonic to deal more damage, rather than being a slightly slower, stronger Stomp Attack. Maybe the Tornado Kick could cause the enemy to become dizzy and incapable of attacking for a short period. Perhaps the Cross Slash could weaken the enemy's attack. Things like this would go such a long way towards introducing even a modicum of depth to the combat, which is so central to Frontiers.

Perhaps the most needed updates in terms of gameplay could be made in the iconic Titan bossfights. Players who stuck with the game from its release through to its final DLC update would tell you that these bosses, while hype and deserving of their enduring status, lack any sort of mechanical depth that would otherwise make replays just as engaging as that legendary first time. Powering up to Super Sonic and hearing Undefeatable in-context for the first time gave me a feeling I know I'll never feel again, but I agree that these encounters do degrade to button-mashing with the occasional timed parry here and there at the end of the day. The Master King DLC trial especially made clear how the original parry made these bosses a complete joke. Being able to indefinitely hold the left and right bumpers to guarantee the deflection of any incoming attack trivialized these encounters. After playing one or two times through the entire game with the Master King-exclusive Perfect Parry modded into the rest of the base game, however, I can confirm that these fights are a lot more exciting. Having to actually time your parries to the bosses' attacks feels rewarding when mastered, especially with the post-patch Hard Mode parry window in that trial (the window was far too short before, considering the ambiguous attack telegraphing).

Small, but meaningful, changes like this are more of what I will hope for in Frontiers DE. I want to see things change about this game that would make it have more depth, more things to sink my teeth into, more ways to further master this adventure I love so much. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Cyberspace. It has been said time and again, but Cyberspace controls poorly compared to the Open Zone. Tight, controllable turns are switched out for lumbering strafes from side to side that take ages to move you anywhere, the Quick Step goes much too far for most stages to keep Sonic on solid ground, jumping in 2D kills all your speed, Sonic is far too slow in 2D, and so on, and so forth. We've all heard it, and we all know it to be true. I personally enjoy Cyberspace despite these issues, but that doesn't change the fact that these issues are present and that they detract from what would otherwise be a very good traditional Action Stage experience. I know what could be thanks again to mods, such as Sonic Frontiers Revisited. The control in that mod's Cyberspace stages is so perfect that I struggle to think of a Frontiers re-release not at least trying to emulate them and also avoiding hellfire from the consumer. Shadow Generations, while still not perfect, controlled leagues better than Frontiers did in its action stages, so a straight port of those physics could be acceptible, but I would hope that further adjustments are taken to prepare people for Frontiers 2. Even allowing Open-Zone physics to translate over one-to-one to Cyberspace would work.

That begs another question, however: would the Open Zone's player control options be stripped back? A feature that was lauded at launch but that has grown to be despised as time has gone on is the presence of multiple "physics sliders" that can let the player alter how Sonic controls. Starting speed? Top speed? Acceleration in the air? Turning radius? Rate of grounded deceleration after releasing the analog stick? Height at which Sonic gets launched off terrain at high speed? You can control all of it. At the time, this was seen as a novel approach to platformer design, which let every player fine-tune the experience as they saw fit. As time went on, however, it became clear that these physics sliders were mere band-aid fixes for the game's rushed dev time, lack of cohesive level design, and general lack of polish. Perhaps a set of unified styles could be ironed out for the Open Zone, whose controls carry over to Cyberspace. The original game had the presets of Action Style and High-Speed Style, but the patched-in Air Drag, Maintain Boost While Jumping, grounded Deceleration Rate, and Power Boost in Cyber Space options fundamentally shake up the game if altered from their defaults, and largely for the best. These, combined with the also patched-in Spin Dash, open up this already open game immeasurably, allowing players to break apart the level design in ways never before thought possible (in a good way). It is always so exhilirating to find a bump in the terrain, ready a Spin Dash next to it, and watch as Sonic careens through the air at maximum velocity. Such thrills have been lost in Sonic games since the days of the Adventure games, and I am so glad that Sonic team has experimented more with momentum-based level design in the Final Horizon and Shadow Generations, even if only slightly.

The DLC

Since Frontiers DE is, in fact, a Definitive Edition, it would be common practice to bundle the Sights, Sounds, and Speed Update, Sonic's Birthday Bash Update, and the Final Horizon Update into the base game and sold on the physical disc itself. These updates all were free, though, and that is the big reason as to why Sonic Team would have to go the extra mile to justify a re-release like this. In effect, any old PS5, Xbox, Steam, or Switch copy of Frontiers is just one free and automatic download away from featuring all major DLC. Anything discussed above, and more, could be included in this re-release to bolster the original experience. Online Cyberspace and Battle Rush leaderboards, DLC Cyberspace stages in Arcade Mode, new cosmetic skins for Sonic and friends, altered physics and player control, new graphical enhancements, a touched-up artstyle, brand-new gameplay content, and so much more could be in the cards. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Speaking of DLC, the Final Horizon ending of the game is completely different from the original ending, and the entirety of that expansion was notoriously even more unbalanced and unpolished than the original game, while bringing with it some of the most fun and hype in a Sonic game. The End Supreme is still one of the sickest Sonic bossfights of all time, but it is marred by essential information players need to know to beat it being locked behind 100% completion of the DLC. The new characters are fun, but Tails' lack of a Homing Attack, Knuckles' jank climbing, and the delays on Amy's Super Boost and Tails' flight and Cyclone Boost massively hinder the gameplay experience of the side trio. The entire expansion is oddly partitioned off from the rest of the game, too, only being accessible from an out-of-place ring portal on Ouranos Island that transports you to the alternate scenario. Will Frontiers DE keep both the original and alternate endings accessible? Will the alternate ending become the default, and the original the one cast to the side? How, if at all, will the story of the game be re-written to accommodate this change? The Final Horizon story was very rushed in its job to get the player into the action as fast as possible while also justifying the revival of the freshly-sacrificed Amy, Knuckles, and Tails. Even then, I liked the original Ouranos section of the game, so will I still be able to play it in Frontiers DE?

Perhaps there's a compromise for the crazies like me who actually quite enjoyed the original game's ending (the gameplay, anyways; the story beats were undeniably rushed and bare-bones). Perhaps on a first playthrough, one is made to play the game's original ending. For all intents and purposes, this would be the "normal" way to play the game. After that run is completed, however (and perhaps after getting S Rank on all the Action Chain Challenges like before), New Game Plus would unlock, which would feature the alternate ending in place of the original, as well as the inclusion of the Spin Dash from the beginning. The difficulty of the game would be raised across the board, too, featuring some originally unused gold variants of all enemies in later areas. These gold enemies were unused because of the Switch's memory limitations, by the way... so if that's not a factor anymore... it could happen, just sayin'. The potential for an overhauled NG+ mode is in general very high, since Sonic Team has learned all their lessons from Frontiers, Final Horizon, and Shadow Gens to know what works and what doesn't about the Open Zone format by now. Extreme Mode could also feature some of these changes, because originally while S-Rank time requirements for Cyberspace were made stricter, the game was barely changed otherwise. Apart from being forced to die in one hit, and being unable to level-up Sonic's stats past level 1, the rest of the game played exactly as it did in Hard difficulty. The same applied to Final Horizon, an addition to the game made after Extremem Mode was introduced.

The problem at the core of Frontiers' collect-a-thon nature is that so many collectibles are lacking in value or reason to grab them. In NG+ or Extreme Mode, all Sonic needs to grab are the Portal Gears and Memory Tokens to progress through the game. The combat required to grab those Portal Gears is disincentivized, however, because either your late-game stats from another save file carry over thanks to NG+, or Extreme Mode nullifies all level-ups. In either case, Seeds of Power and Defense become useless. Similarly, Lost Koco also lose their value, because Ring Capacity and Speed also cannot be upgraded in these modes. I personally don't level up any of my stats anymore when I play the game, so I'm used to being locked at level 1 at this point, and even then the game still isn't very hard for me (until The End Supreme, at least; and it is worth noting that I have logged over 250 hours on the game across Steam, Switch, and PS5, so I would consider myself to be very good at it). Rings would be a useful collectible, but you can get as many as you want by Cylooping the ground ad infinitum, so the ones in the Open Zone are similarly valueless. All you need are Memory Tokens and enough Portal Gears to unlock two or three Cyberspace portals. If you get every Vault Key in those portals, every Chaos Emerald not tied to story progression will probably be open to you. Once again, though, Big's fishing spots can be used to bypass as much of this content as you have Purple Coins to spend on fishing trips.

Extreme Mode and NG+ being overhauled could help to remedy this by making the game harder throughout, replacing redundant collectibles with other, more useful ones, and especially spicing up the game's combat to give players more of an excuse to participate in it beyond the surface level. I already discussed bumping the difficulty earlier, so what about collectibles? Especially in Extreme, Seeds and Lost Koco are explicitly designed to be useless, so what about replacing them with a new collectible that could count towards unlocking new cosmetic options for Sonic and friends (examples pictured, right)? The subsequent Sonic releases of Superstars, Dream Team, CrossWorlds, and even Shadow Generations introduced alternate outfits and appearances for Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy that could easily be ported to Frontiers with a few minor tweaks (or major tweaks, in the case of the Classic-era Superstars). On top of that, new costumes could be cooked up that never existed before. Adding new things to go for like this would go a long way towards incentivizing island exploration.

As far as combat upgrades go that I haven't already discussed, the surface-level most people judge the game's combat for isn't far off from the full depth of the experience. There is an optimal combo to perform on every single enemy with no reason to deviate, and it all comes down to raw DPS (Damage Per Second). This means that the most optimal way to go about combat is to spam the same move over and over again, because the highest DPS move Sonic has access to at any time is probably loopable into itself. In early-game, that move is the Stomp Attack. Later on, it gets outclassed by Cross Slash, which itself never gets out-performed. Just doing \em{something} to improve the depth of the combat system would make it more fun, and therefore more easily able to dive into for new and veteran players alike.

The When

So, we know from the Korean rating that the game is overwhelmingly likely to be real... but when are we going to hear about it? When are we going to be able to play it ourselves? We do, actually, have a bit of information to support the hypothesis that we'll be hearing about the game sometime in mid-May 2026. First, and most prominently, we have a tweet from the official Sonic Blitz account. Sonic Blitz is a currently-unreleased mobile game that went through rounds of open pre-release testing in certain regions, so we know this to at least be some brand of official information. Pictured below is the tweet (image courtesy of Tails Channel):

To most Sonic fans, a date of May would seem too early for a big Sonic-related announcement like this. Sonic's exact anniversary date is 23rd June, after all, so most would expect a big announcement around that time. IGN Live, an in-person convention in Los Angeles, takes place on the weekend of 6th June, which is much closer! What's more, Roger Craig Smith, voice acting extraordinaire responsible for the current voice of Sonic himself, mentioned in this interview with Variety that he was particularly excited for the event. While he later confirmed outright on Twitter that he wasn't teasing news related to specifically Sonic, he also went on to say that he was, and I quote, "DEFINITELY not teasing a particular reveal of any kind." All this is to say... he gives major "dad joke" energy all the time, and I think I sincerely love that.

A reveal in May would make sense, though, for another simple reason: any release made to coincide with that late-June anniversary would have to be announced before then! A one-month reveal-to-release turnaround would be incredibly fast, even for Sonic's speedy hype-cycle standards. Origins was (formally) revealed in late-April 2022 and released only two months later, after all, and Colors Ultimate had a similarly snappy late-May to early-September turnaround. Just one month is far too short, though, so some doubt that we'll be seeing this release anywhere near the first half of 2026.

There is one more subtle detail hinting at something happening in May, and close followers of Sonic's social media presence may already know what I'm talking about. Back in mid-January, the Sonic accounts on YouTube, Twitter, and BlueSky began putting out monthly posts, art, and videos celebrating the various decades of Sonic in a mini-campaign that has come to be known as "Eras Rewind." Starting with the current decade, the 2020s, each month would focus on a different decade. January and February focused the present, as mentioned; February and March put a spotlight on the controversial 2010's; March and April are now seeing the perhaps even more controversial 2000's set on display. From this, we can intuit that April and May will see the widely-beloved 1990's at the forefront. Because this spotlight on the 90's will probably end around the third quarter of May, though, what does that mean for the month between then and Sonic's birthday in late June? Will something happen at the end of the 90's celebration to fill that gap for fans? Perhaps a Sonic Central presentation announcing, among other things, what we can expect from Frontiers DE?

One big pain point for some of the... more impatient fans out there is just how long it's been since Frontiers. We need a new game, or at least confirmation that there's one coming, right? Well, I myself have felt that gap that's been growing since the release of CrossWorlds. To fill it, then, I've been shifting my focus elsewhere for the time being. Grad school started back up again, so I've been in the thick of that for a while. My backlog has grown to be monstrous, as well, so I knocked a few games off the list. Hollow Knight, Silksong, Pizza Tower, Celeste, and Zelda: Skyward Sword HD are games I beat for the first time in the last year or so, with the non-Hollow Knight ones all being beat since the start of this year. It is obvious to most people that Sonic isn't the only great thing in gaming to be engaged in right now, but sometimes it's nice to have a reminder that there are other things to enjoy outside your immediate vision. Get off social media and do something! That's what things are meant for, right? To be done? Not just to be complained about to a thousand or so anonymous viewers?

The... Outro?

As I alluded to above, I don't have eyes only for Sonic in the gaming sphere. One big reason I've been so behind on this blog, for instance, is because I wanted to write something about Deltarune that I've been thinking about for a while, but I got some pretty bad writer's block about it. In addition, my Thursday nights are always taken up by local Smash Ultimate tournaments. The delay mod has me practicing with my friends again (only the ones who also have the delay mod; don't worry, I always make sure that my practice is fair for both people), and my scene is hosting a regional this summer that's already looking to be mighty stacked. In addition, I have had my eyes on the Switch 2 for a while. Kirby Air Riders and DK Bananza look like fun, but outside of those two games nothing on the system really appeals to me quite yet. Even the universally acclaimed Pokopia isn't a style of game I'm really into right now. I'm hoping to line up a full-time job this summer, so maybe I can save up for one down the road, we'll have to see.

That's not to say my interest in Sonic has waned, of course. Far from it; I play CrossWorlds with my friends all the time, I keep watching the community and Sonic social media accounts to see what's happening, and I keep thoughts like what I shared today in my head. I tell my friends about what I'm thinking - the ones that are as into Sonic as me, anyways - and that definitely helps develop my thoughts a bit more. I always find it to be best for my thoughts to just put everything on the page and see where they take me from there.

That'll be about all from me today. I await what's to come, and am keeping my expectations low (but my hopes high...). I'll lock in my guess right now: this will be a Switch 2 Edition release which updates the game to be in-line with its performance on other consoles like PS5 and PC. I hope to write more about other things I've been up to soon. See y'all next time!